Define diversity to breach ‘bamboo ceiling’

The lack of a clear, accepted definition of cultural diversity is making it harder to some workers to climb the corporate ladder.

Ken Saurajen and Alison Woolsey aim to improve diversity at Clayton Utz, which has introduced ‘reverse mentoring’. Picture: Jane Dempster

The lack of a clear, accepted definition of cultural diversity is making it more difficult to tackle the “bamboo ceiling” that exists at the most senior levels of the ­corporate world.

This is the view of Julie Chai, the head of the Asian Leadership Project, who told a conference at Clayton Utz this week that law firms and other organisations needed to do more to ensure they were promoting the best talent.

Ms Chai also believes better benchmarking and targets are needed across corporate Australia and a new workplace agency, equivalent to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, to address cultural diversity issues.

She said people from culturally diverse backgrounds were sick of “celebrations” of events such as Harmony Day, and instead it was time for action.

“As a firm, business leaders need to ask, are we harnessing the full potential of all diverse talent pools?” she told The Australian.

Clayton Utz director of diversity and inclusion Alison Woolsey agreed that a clearer definition was needed of “what we’re asking” with respect to cultural ­diversity.

She said the release of the most recent ASX corporate governance principles was a “missed opportunity” to move beyond gender diversity and to promote other forms of diversity, including cultural and sexual orientation.

Partner Ken Saurajen, the head of Clayton Utz’s cultural diversity program, said the firm had two key priorities with respect to talent. The first was to ensure at the entry level its recruits reflected the diversity of law school graduates. The second was to ensure that culturally diverse lawyers who left the firm were not doing so “for the wrong reasons”.

A survey of eight large law firms found earlier this year that while 25 per cent of law graduates and 20 per cent of non-partner lawyers were born or had a parent who was born in an Asian country, only 8 per cent of partners had an Asian background.

Mr Saurajen said one reason lawyers from diverse backgrounds left midway through careers was because of a “perceived lack of sponsorship” — whether they realised it overtly or not.

“They look at the leaders of the firm and its board and they think to themselves, I don’t see many people who look like me in those positions,” he said.

“It’s hard to motivate yourself towards being something that you can’t visualise.”

The firm was also working on appreciating different leadership styles. He said Western cultures tended to recognise people who spoke up in meetings and promoted their own work — it was the squeakiest wheel who got the grease.

In Asian cultures, it was more common to do your job quietly and trust that your work would speak for itself — it was the loudest duck who got shot.

“That is often misinterpreted as a lack of typical leadership attributes when in fact Asian talent can be highly strategic but a bit slower to vocalise their thoughts and opinions,” he said.

Clayton Utz has introduced “reverse mentoring”, in which a senior member of the firm is “mentored” by a junior lawyer with a culturally diverse background.

It is also encouraging “storytelling”, in which people from different backgrounds share their stories, and it is helping lawyers who are not inclined to self-promote, to push their work through avenues such as LinkedIn.

Lawyers at the firm also receive unconscious bias training refreshers or “nudges” at critical points of the talent cycle, including at summer clerk recruitment and remuneration review time.

University of NSW dean of law George Williams said there was no clear metric for measuring cultural diversity at law schools.

“Law schools really could and should do more in measuring and tracking these things because it’s very important,” he said.